Ed Brayton is right that Maryland’s Parkdale High School is taking a “weird” approach to religious accommodation.

The school is requiring Muslim students to maintain a certain level of GPA in order to qualify for being excused from classes for daily prayers.

As Brayton writes, “If the accommodation is reasonable under the Free Exercise clause, it’s reasonable for all Muslim students, not just the ones with a certain grade point average.”

He’s also right that there should be some formal correction for the Parkdale teachers upset over any accommodation of the Muslim students’ prayers who told their classes that the public institution was “a Christian school.”

What those teachers likely meant is that the majority of students attending the school are, at least culturally, Christian. That’s probably true. But that doesn’t mean that Christians, because we’re the majority, get to enjoy privileges denied to neighbors of other faiths or of no faith.

For Christians trying to figure out a way to think about these things, let me suggest the Miley Rule — the ethical principle articulated by the great moral philosopher Miley Cyrus: “Just put yourself in that person’s shoes.”

How would the good Christians of Riverdale Park, Md., feel if the free exercise of their religious beliefs were made conditional on maintaining a high GPA? How would it feel to be in their shoes?

Or, as Miley also said, “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

Wait, maybe that last one wasn’t Miley, maybe that was Jesus. Either way, it seems like a good rule.

I attended the public John Greenleaf Whittier elementary school through second grade. Every Wednesday, my Catholic classmates were dismissed early to walk a few blocks over to St. John’s for catechism. If our schools could accommodate that, we can certainly figure out how to accommodate the prayers of our Muslim students as well.

* * * * * * * * *

I think the Miley Rule and that other rule also apply to this story.

In a recent post at Out of Ur, David Fitch defines LGBT people as suffering from “sexual brokenness.”

Apart from the merits or demerits of that particular position, it’s odd that Fitch characterizes this as a demonstration of his “taking a non-position to this question.” His post is titled “Why You Shouldn’t Have a Position on LGBTQs,” and I think he’s quite sincere when he claims “we have no position.”

I think he quite sincerely doesn’t realize that, yes, in fact, he does.

“What does it mean to be privileged?” Jamelle Bouie asked. “It means not having to think about any of this, ever.”

And it means getting to pretend that “we have no position,” even when you clearly do.

And it means that you get to decide what “position” to take toward others, or to loftily take no position at all, while others can never have a “position” on the “question” of you. Unlike them, you’re never a “question.” That’s what privilege means.

Fitch’s title — “You Shouldn’t Have a Position on LGBTQs” — cannot make any sense for the many “yous” reading it who are themselves lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered or queer. How can you have “no position” on yourself? I suppose that’s marginally better than being asked or required to have a “position” against yourself, but still, what are LGBT Christians to make of Fitch’s argument?

My advice for Fitch would be, again, listen to Miley: Just put yourself in that person’s shoes.

See Fred, the problem here is you’re asking them to think about other people, and that requires effort… something most of these folks appear entirely unwilling to expend on anyone not themselves.

Water_Bear

You know, if this GPA-based Freedom of Religion was around when I was in high school, it would have been so much more fun.

Almost all the kids praying around the flagpole every morning or hunched over their desks with steepled fingers before a test, gone. Or at least quiet. And me and my obnoxious friends would have been wearing full pirate regalia and eating big plates of pasta, offering our oblations to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Oh, if only…

Tricksterson

Except I’m presuming that this rule doesn’t apply to Christian students. Or does it?

I seem to remember a post on this very blog, some time ago, calling out “Totally Persecuted American Christians” who claimed, erroneously, that they’d been punished for praying in school. ‘Twas a blatant lie, of course, since prayer has always been protected by the First Amendment, as long as the students were quiet and didn’t try to force others along.

Or as long as they’re not Muslim, apparently.

Leum

What’s especially odious about Fitch’s “no stance” is that he does have a stance: I am a “sexually broken” person because I am attracted to men. The fact that I form sexual-romantic attractions to men is pathological. I am in need of “sexual redemption.” These may not be stances about my political status as a gay man–which, of course, shouldn’t exist because matters of sexual pathology should be private–but they are definitively stances about my social status.

http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

> but they are definitively stances about my social status

Indeed. Also about our mental health, which has implications beyond the social.

For a given value of “sexual” I can see how that might apply to at least one group in “LGBTQ” but reading the article, which never defines its terms at all, I’m pretty sure that’s not the meaning of “sexual” being used.

The only way I can see it as anything but an extremely negative judgement value, which is very much a position, is if “sexual” is referring to sex as in the phenotype of one’s body as opposed to sex as in the act. In that case one could probably make the argument that when the body of a person doesn’t match the gender identity of that person there is a brokenness.

One that we can solve. (To a degree at least.)

But somehow I don’t think that Fitch is arguing for greater access to transgender related care. Could be wrong, but I didn’t get a sense of “Free endocrinology for everyone,” rolling off that article. (Or anything similar.)

What I did get a sense of was the assumption that he was thinking about sex the act (in which case what the fuck is “T” doing in there?*) and passing judgement that anyone who isn’t cissexual and straight is broken with respect to the act. That seems like a position, and a pretty damned strong one, to me.

–

*I’m not saying that those who fall under the T don’t have sex, but since its defining characteristic has nothing to do with the act of sex or preference with respect to sexual partners, it seems very odd to include it when your focus is going to be as narrow as things related to the act of sex and nothing else.

ScorpioUndone

I absolutely agree with you here, and was going to say much the same thing. Being transgender has nothing to do with who I choose for a sexual partner, it has to do with who I am as a gendered person.

Just because I’m called a transsexual doesn’t mean it’s about the sex act, for crying out loud. I really wish that when it comes to discussions of sexual “brokenness” (a bullshit term that needs to be wiped from Christian dictionaries the way “rape” needs to be wiped from the GOP’s) that people would do their homework and learn what they’re talking about first.

I’d maybe also say that refusing to take a position is nothing more than a cop out. While I respect the refusal to elevate homosexuality as the chiefest sin, the way many congregations tend to, I don’t respect a church that stands idly by, doing nothing to effect positive change for groups of people that have a history of being beaten down by that very same church.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

In a recent post at Out of Ur, David Fitch defines LGBT people as suffering from “sexual brokenness.”

Welladay then.

Bless his heart.

Tricksterson

The Sarcasm is strong in this one.

Matt in PDX

Thanks for your comments on the Fitch post, Fred!

Just in the last couple days we’ve heard the CEO of eHarmony claim that “At its best, [homosexuality has] been a painful way for a lot of people to have to live”, and a teacher in Indiana (who supports an effort by some of her students to hold a private senior prom that excludes LGBT students) claim that gay people have no purpose in life. Now here’s Fitch asserting that LGBT people are “sexually broken”.

As a gay man, I’m sick and tired of people exercising their straight privilege by making blanket statements about my life and worth as a person. Thank you, Fred, for calling out this form of patronizing bigotry masquerading as magnanimity and concern for others.

http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

Just in the last couple days we’ve heard the CEO of eHarmony claim that “At its best, [homosexuality has] been a painful way for a lot of people to have to live”, and a teacher in Indiana (who supports an effort by some of her students to hold a private senior prom that excludes LGBT students) claim that gay people have no purpose in life. Now here’s Fitch asserting that LGBT people are “sexually broken”.

Homosexuality has been a painful way for a lot of people to have to live, in large part because of people like the CEO of eHarmony, the teacher in Indiana, and Fitch.

Albanaeon

Leaving aside the (garbage) positions Fitch actually has, I don’t think there is a non-position on LGBT issues. A “neutral” position supports the status-quo, where LGBT’s are less than full citizens. So you are for them being less-than you. Which cannot be considered “neutral.”

http://stealingcommas.blogspot.com/ chris the cynic

I don’t think there is a non-position on LGBT issues. A “neutral” position supports the status-quo, where LGBT’s are less than full citizens. So you are for them being less-than you. Which cannot be considered “neutral.”

If this hasn’t already been said (haven’t read all the comments), it needs to be said.

You’re entirely right. If the status quo is hurting people then alleged “neutrality” is a position against them. You’re either with the oppressed, or you’re against them under the guise of neutrality and inaction, or you’re actively against then.

A lot of the time, “If you’re not with us your against us / If you’re not against us you’re with us,” is utter bullshit. But “A lot of the time” is not “All of the time.”

Leum

What I did get a sense of was the assumption that he was thinking about sex the act (in which case what the fuck is “T” doing in there?*) and passing judgement that anyone who isn’t cissexual and straight is broken with respect to the act. That seems like a position, and a pretty damned strong one, to me.

I have two theories: either he thinks LGBT just somehow became the catch-all term for gay, lesbian, and bi people and isn’t aware of what the T stands for, or, more likely, he thinks trans people are uber-gay. That isn’t actually an uncommon position, and stems from the idea that being attracted to the same sex is inherently emasculating/whatever the equivalent term for women is.

http://musings.northerngrove.com/ JarredH

he thinks trans people are uber-gay.

I’m not sure it’s so much that he sees trans* people as “uber-gay” so much as he just assumes that both non-heterosexual sexual orientations and being trans* are “the same” in that they represent a break from traditional gender roles and gender essentialism.

In her book, Whipping Girl, Julia Serano talks about how oppositional sexism (of which gender essentialism/complimentarianism is a huge part) influences the various -phobias and -sexisms that plague all the sexual minorities.

Carstonio

Maybe it would help if our culture stopped assuming that the sexes are opposites.

http://musings.northerngrove.com/ JarredH

That’s a central theme of Serano’s argument. I’m inclined to agree with you both.

I can kind of understand the idea behind the prayer exception GPA requirement. If you’re doing well enough, then a short break from the classroom won’t hurt anything. If you’re not doing so well, then you probably don’t need to be missing parts of the lecture. I would one-up it to a blanket rule though– maintain a high enough GPA and you can excuse yourself for any reason, at any time. You’ve demonstrated maturity and the capacity to utilize your time effectively, so if you need a breather, go take one. I’d probably set the minimum grade to a B- equivalent.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

The thing is, I would make it strictly nondenominational. Say, any student who can maintain a B+ or better can stay out of classes for any reason or no reason.

AnonymousSam

*Nods* That’s what I meant by “for any reason.” As far as I’m concerned, what those reasons are should be the student’s business and shouldn’t even need to be uttered, whether they’re for prayer or because Macy’s is having a sale. If you’re getting enough out of lessons to demonstrate adequate comprehension of the material, you’re holding up your end of the bargain.

Madhabmatics

Our rural k-12 school actually had this policy. We had a school administration PhD that was, I guess, very into experimentation. I don’t want to be specific because some of it was under the nose of the county.

It was great, students had a real incentive to act well because the less of a problem you were, the more freedom you had. It also really helped prepare for college, because if you said “Yeah I’m planning on going to college” your teachers could just send you to the library to do article analysis instead of sitting in whatever class you were in going through ~graduation exam~ material.

I’ve followed that adminstrator’s career since, and he’s been going to inner city schools w/ problems and working his sorcery on them. Every time he gets to a school, you’ll see local forums light up about how cool this principal is and how the kids and parents love him.

Right now there is a poor child somewhere that is able to do directed reading in a library about a subject they love, and they can probably hear the mournful sounds of the principal’s banjo echoing down the hallway.

AnonymousSam

It’s one of the things I loved about college. While there were attendence quotas you had to make if you were on financial aid programs, several of my instructors didn’t care what we did as long after showing up as we were turning in work that reflected understanding of the subjects. Those who did care tended to have lectures which were engrossing and interactive, so one didn’t want to be missing them.

http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

I can entirely see how the policy they enacted could have resulted from a sequence of well-meaning and not-deliberately-discriminatory decisions each of which seemed perfectly reasonable and logical, and which at any stage would have been completely fixed if there’d been a Muslim or really anyone with any awareness of religions that have rigid requirements that don’t easily align with christianity involved anywhere in the process to say, “Hey Bob, but wouldn’t this end up blocking the free practice of their religion?”

Veylon

While I believe that a case can be made that homosexuality is “unnatural” (and hence, broken in some sense), that doesn’t automatically carry all the way to “wrong”. Especially when we’ve got a society that embraces everything from liposuction to laser eye surgery to artificial light. It’s always struck me as somewhat hypocritical for someone who’s lived their entire life safely enclosed in a constructed world to get all hot and bothered about “natural law”.

Leum

Maybe the case can be made, but I’d rather people not even come close to implying that the fact that I fall in love with men is “broken,” thanks.

vsm

That would be something like Freud’s idea of homosexuality, I guess. He thought it was a result of disrupted child development, but didn’t think there was anything inherently wrong about it or that gay people should or even could be “cured”.

Water_Bear

Homosexuality is both heritable and makes up more than 5% of the population. That’s not something likely to happen by coincidence; at some point there was (or still is) a selective or sexual advantage to carrying a gay allele around. We don’t know what, exactly, the benefit of having a portion of the population being gay is, but the more we understand the genetics and neuroscience of homosexuality the more likely it is we’ll stumble onto the answer.

TL;DR: Homosexuality is natural in humans, possibly even beneficial to the species or individual familial groups, it’s just rare.

Hexep

Oh, it certainly does. It creates a pool of people who, despite contributing normally to society – that is to say, by putting in more than they take out, under ideal circumstances – yet who ideally won’t reproduce and thus won’t expand the group’s population, thus not increasing demand. In primitive societies, this was very important.

It’s the same effect as elderly people, except that they run the gamut of all ages and thus are less likely to be physically frail (until they become elderly themselves, at which point it’s moot.)

The effect is still visible today; gay villages throughout the western world are gentrified as all hell, as their occupants tend to have a lot of disposable income because they aren’t as likely to spend it on kids.

You’ll note he was talking about primitive societies rather than the United States in the 21st century.

Carstonio

If Hexep is saying that it’s preferable that LGBT people not reproduce, what difference would that make whether it’s a primitive society or a modern industrial/technological one?

http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

I can’t speak for vsm or Hexep, but it seems to me that “it’s better for everyone if queer people today don’t have children” and “ten thousand years ago, we lived in arrangements where it was better for everyone if queer people didn’t have children” are very different statements from the point of view of supporting/challenging social norms and setting policy.

For my own part, I suspect both statements are strictly speaking true, but a more useful way to frame the topic is that it has always been better for everyone if some subset of the healthy adult population isn’t having children at any given moment (where “having children” encompasses not just giving birth, but also raising them to the point where they on average produce more resources than they consume), and the optimal size of that subset varies depending on the size of the population, birth and death rates, average lifespan, available resources, etc. etc. (This is vaguely related to life history theory, but only vaguely.)

I say “strictly speaking” because, if it’s optimal for everyone if N% of the population to have trait T, and group G comprises N% of the population, then yes, it’s better for everyone if group G has trait T (than if nobody does), but that’s a misleading way to talk about it, since it suggests that it’s better for everyone if group G has trait T (than if some other N% of the population does), which isn’t true at all.

In the same sense, yes, it’s better for everyone if queers don’t reproduce (than if everybody reproduces), but that’s a misleading way to talk about it, because it’s not true at all that it’s better for everyone if queers don’t reproduce (than if some other N% of the population doesn’t).

Carstonio

a more useful way to frame the topic is that it has always been better for everyone if some subset of the healthy adult population isn’t having children at any given moment

While I don’t argue with that contention, we can’t assume that anyone who asks the question is using the framing Hexep appeared to use. I inferred from “ideally” that LGBT folks reproducing would allegedly have negative effects besides creating more demand for scarce resources. That inference was based on the longstanding homophobic claims about gays either recruiting or influencing others into their “lifestyle.” You’re exactly right that the framing is misleading.

http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

Well, in a primitive society, a gay man or a lesbian reproducing would necessarily involve certain prerequisite acts that pretty much by definition, a gay man or lesbian would not care to do.

Hexep

No, I will not.

If any other person has felt offended by my choice of words, I beg their pardon. I was attempting to describe caveman times, the halcyon days before the advent of the turkey-baster, as it were, before the light of science and medicine, when babies came out of vaginas because a penis had previously gone into them, and someone who wasn’t down for the latter (former?) would have to make some hard choices about the former (latter?), and statistics alone demand that some would fall on one side, and others on t’other – and of course, now we are much closer to a society where nobody has to pretend, and the amount of people who have to tote around offspring as an elaborate disguise is steadily on the decrease.

But to you, RLS, I make no such offer. Through ten-thousand leagues of copper wire and shimmering radiation, I have looked into your heart and judged you wholly wanting. You feel no genuine hurt or outrage, nor any wound that could be laid at my feet as the product of my hand. You are simply attempting to jerk me around, to feel powerful, to catch me on something and make me apologize, and thus place your feet above me head. You want to have a holier-than-thou moment at my expense, and make me stutter.

You have not succeeded. Should you say otherwise, I will not believe you. That is all.

Carstonio

No offense taken, particularly now that I understand your point more clearly. Your point about the beneficial effect of some adults not procreating is a good refutation of one particular homophobic falsehood – the non-procreative nature of same-sex relationships imperiling the human race. I’ve even encountered the claim that gays and lesbians are selfishly denying their genetic heritage to future generations.

Ultimately there’s no support for homosexuality being objectively immoral. Or put another way, society has no interest in having a norm that favors a particular orientation over any others. While one cannot choose one’s orientation, one can choose whether to express it through relationships, and that should be an individual choice rather than a societal one. Before my state legalized same-sex marriage, the high court had argued that marriage was for procreation, while conveniently ignoring that this would justify denying marriage to straight couples who can’t or won’t reproduce. Similarly, if a society experienced a massive crisis of infertility and weighed making procreation mandatory, the problem wouldn’t be homosexuality specifically but non-procreative sex in general.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

“ideally” can also be value-neutral, because it can refer to the way a certain model operates. “Ideally”, in physics, all surfaces are frictionless. :P

Cathy W

But then you have to consider that whatever is described as the “ideal” is as realistic as a perfectly spherical cow or an economic transaction where both buyer and seller are perfectly informed.

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

There is that. I take “ideally don’t reproduce” as acknowledgement of a simplification of a model, not as a value statement. And I happen to be a QUILTBAG person, so I know whereof I speak when I say I am not offended. :p

http://twitter.com/ElanasHunter Elanas Moonlily

Hexep:

The effect is still visible today; gay villages throughout the western world are gentrified as all hell, as their occupants tend to have a lot of disposable income because they aren’t as likely to spend it on kids.

And yet many LGBT groups average well below the population at large: individuals of color, lesbian couples, trans individuals and couples, and so on. About the strongest reliable claim is that white male individuals and couples with access to education and professional preparation do notably well. That’s not the same as saying that all or even most LGBT are so fortunate.

Carstonio

There’s a phony populist song and dance in the homophobic repertoire, the claim that LGBT folks can’t be oppressed since their average annual income is higher. You’re right to point out that this is an incomplete portrait of that group. But so far Hexep doesn’t seem to be making that claim.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=667708632 Kenneth Raymond

It’s possible there’s no real adaptive “advantage” to homosexuality being around in our genes, that maybe it’s a recessive trait carried by a number of people – active or inactive – that just keeps getting passed on. Maybe it’s a gene complex, which can break up and recombine somewhere down the line. There are lots of ways for traits to carry on, even ones that suggest they might reduce a person’s likelihood of directly contributing to the gene pool. (Then again, there are a lot of gay people who have had kids, for one reason or another.)

My personal hypothesis is that if it is an adaptive trait for humans and other species, it’s related to “quality, not quantity” approaches to child-rearing. Given we’re rather social creatures, it may be advantageous to have a “less-reproductive” subset of the population who can help provide care to their “more-reproductive” kin – or at least who are less likely to create more competitors for resources. (Though again, lots of gay people who have kids too. But you could make a worthy argument for culture overcoming biology, given closeted people bowing to social pressure to act straight.)

Water_Bear

Just because a dominant allele is present doesn’t necessarily mean the recessive one is completely unexpressed. The gene for Sickle Cell Anemia, the most well known example of this, is actually quite useful if you only have the one allele. And not just for the people who have it; the whole society benefits from reduced malaria transmittance even with a small incidence of the gene.

Plus, something so heavily impacting reproductive success of the individual doesn’t get to ~5% of the population just through genetic drift. The “gay gene(s)” have to fight an uphill battle just to stay in the gene pool, so there’s got to be a pretty seriously good reason for it to have stayed around through our 1mil year history as a species. And culture only accounts for the last 50,000 at most.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=667708632 Kenneth Raymond

Well, again I bring up my “quality, not quantity” hypothesis, which is an argument for “gay genes” as an adaptive feature not present merely through gene drift. It means you could have a mother or father who is a carrier for the recessive “gay gene(s)” while their sibling has both recessive and is gay. That sibling provides care to the carrier’s children, making the recessive gene more likely to prosper because the children receive better care. Hominids are generally social enough that this can play a part across dang near the entire 1mil year history without worrying about culture. But in (relatively) recent human history, culture is an added factor that might help keep it vital for other reasons.

Then again, not everything about how we develop is strictly down to genes. Not by far. So reducing homosexuality’s persistence in nature to “alleles” is potentially as fallacious as saying “well maybe it just drifts along and survives.” DNA doesn’t precisely code for every detail, but development is strongly influenced by the conditions we develop in – see also: epigenetics, when non-genetic factors cause genes to express differently. In this case, it’s literally not a matter of genes for sexuality facing Darwinian pressures as it is some other condition in our development influencing human sexuality.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=667708632 Kenneth Raymond

Well, again I bring up my “quality, not quantity” hypothesis, which is an argument for “gay genes” as an adaptive feature not present merely through gene drift. It means you could have a mother or father who is a carrier for the recessive “gay gene(s)” while their sibling has both recessive and is gay. That sibling provides care to the carrier’s children, making the recessive gene more likely to prosper because any children who are also carriers receive better care. Hominids are generally social enough that this can play a part across dang near the entire 1mil year history without worrying about culture. But in (relatively) recent human history, culture is an added factor that might help keep it vital for other reasons.

Then again, not everything about how we develop is strictly down to genes. Not by far. So reducing homosexuality’s persistence in nature to “alleles” is potentially as fallacious as saying “well maybe it just drifts along and survives.” DNA doesn’t precisely code for every detail, but development is strongly influenced by the conditions we develop in – see also: epigenetics, when non-genetic factors cause genes to express differently. In this case, it’s literally not a matter of genes for sexuality facing Darwinian pressures as it is some other condition in our development influencing human sexuality.

(Minor edit for clarity.)

http://blog.trenchcoatsoft.com Ross

Even when your goal is good, it is generally not a good idea to try to explain human behavior using vague appeals to evolution. You’ll encourage the evo-psych types.

Carstonio

To expand on Walter Bear’s rebuttal, please don’t pretend that “natural” and “unnatural” aren’t value concepts. Homosexuality constitutes brokenness only if one assumes that procreation is inherently good or desirable, or that every being’s intended purpose is to reproduce. (And many same-sex couples do procreate with outside assistance.) This is not to say that procreation is inherently bad or undesirable, but merely that an unnecessary assumption is being made.

Foelhe

Funny, I don’t think you can make a case that homosexuality is unnatural. Unless you think “unnatural” means “unusual”, in which case you know fuck-all about nature.

Tricksterson

I think most people define “unnatural” as “I don’t like it”

CoolHandLNC

I agree with you about “natural law”, but we are probably not interpreting the term quite the way it is intended. I’m really not qualified to explain what it does mean, I’m just trying to understand the other side’s point of view. In this context, perhaps along the line that “because most people form families with a man and a woman in marriage bearing children, that is the Natural Order of Things, and people who do otherwise are outside that order”. Of course families haven’t always looked like that — the nuclear family is recent enough to be experimental — nor have all human societies organized themselves that way. That is the problem with trying to deduce “should” from “is”. It tends to get clogged up with preconceived notions.

Curiously, the term “artificial” has no such problems. Artificial simply means made through skill or craft. Artificial does not mean unnatural. (That shows up as a flaw in the argument for ID creationism.)

Foelhe

The context isn’t that hard. Conservatives think something’s natural if it’s normal to them. If they’re not familiar with something, it must go against nature. They only like the word unnatural because it lets them make an appeal to authority, which is the only argument they’re really good at making. In this case the appeal is to Mother Nature rather than YHWH, but nothing else really changes.

CoolHandLNC

The context isn’t that hard. Conservatives think something’s natural if it’s normal to them. If they’re not familiar with something, it must go against nature. They only like the word unnatural because it lets them make an appeal to authority, which is the only argument they’re really good at making. In this case the appeal is to Mother Nature rather than YHWH, but nothing else really changes.

That sounds about right, or at least consistent with how I have actually heard it used. I was trying to be slightly more circumspect. How is one to to reconcile such conservative appeals to natural law with those such as Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr. (“arc of the moral universe bends toward justice”) who appeal to natural law to effect change?

http://apocalypsereview.wordpress.com/ Invisible Neutrino

There are two different forms of natural law being appealed to, and it’s in the interest of conservatives to purposely muddy up which one they’re talking about.

In science, “natural law” is that which might also be termed “the laws of physics”: i.e. the universe as a composition of particles and fields, and the interactions between them. As such, when we observe the universe we see that even without conscious intervention certain things occur predictably: objects fall under the influence of gravity. Entropy increases*. Energy is released under certain conditions and absorbed under other conditions.

In short, there are whole classes of phenomena for which you can bend, but not break, the rules. *You can try to achieve localized decreases of entropy, but only if the entropy of the whole universe at least stays the same, if not increases.

You can artificially induce certain energy transformations (e.g. nuclear power), and you can hold objects against gravity (e.g. your table), but in the end…

… the laws are essentially immutable.

However, there is a different “natural law”, usually appealed to by philosophers and political scientists, which assume that humans are an integral part of the picture and that things like individual freedoms are innate and should be protected as such.

But to cut a long story short, the fact is that the “laws” of this kind are not immutable. They can be changed, circumscribed, even done away with – as the USSR and other regimes have so amply proven.

But the idea of human freedoms being a part of natural law and considered to be a force of nature just as much as electromagnetism is, has a rather irresistible appeal to people who want to suppress what they see as being socially objectionable.

After all, in this second category of natural law, the rules are ultimately what you want them to be, and if, in doing so, you can appeal to the first category as some kind of backing for your particular wants, all the better for you and all the worse for, say, QUILTBAG people.

Worth reading, especially if you regularly get into arguments with people who try to invoke Natural Law to kill the debate.

Foelhe

MLK’s line about the arc of the moral universe is an appeal to justice, of course, as well as a statement of hope and a warning to others that they were on the wrong side of history. But that’s only part of his argument. He also spent a great deal of time pointing out that the racial double-standards in his day were unjust. It’s pretty impossible to argue that they weren’t unjust, and his writing makes that clear.

That’s the core difference, I think. MLK asked people to stop injustice, claimed racism was injustice, then made it pretty damn clear that this was true. Even if he hadn’t, the injustice would have been pretty damn obvious for anyone clear-eyed enough to see it, but MLK wedded injustice and racism, made it clear you couldn’t have the latter without the former.

Conservative Christians? They ask people to stop unnatural behavior, say being gay is unnatural behavior, and then end with “because I said so, that’s why”. Not really the same level.

Hexep

I can theoretically conceive of phenomena that could be unnatural – geometric forms whose sides don’t add up, one-dimensional objects, things like that – but not any kind of concrete, tactile thing, or being. Is there such a thing as an actual, physical form that is ‘unnatural?’

Emcee, cubed

While I believe that a case can be made that homosexuality is “unnatural” (and hence, broken in some sense)

And I believe that case would be a really hard one to make. If you define “unnatural” as “doesn’t occur in nature”, homosexuality occurs frequently in nature. Many other species engage in homosexuality, both in activity and in forming relationships. If you mean “not natural to humans”, I beg to differ. It is certainly natural to me, and many other people. The argument is usually, “It isn’t natural to [the person making the argument], therefore it isn’t natural.” This is akin to saying “I don’t like carrots, therefore liking carrots is unnatural.” (Now, a case can be made that homosexuality is abnormal, if one uses a strict definition of “abnormal” meaning “outside of the norm”. But that is rarely what the average person means when they say that.)

Emcee, cubed

While I believe that a case can be made that homosexuality is “unnatural” (and hence, broken in some sense)

And I believe that case would be a really hard one to make. If you define “unnatural” as “doesn’t occur in nature”, homosexuality occurs frequently in nature. Many other species engage in homosexuality, both in activity and in forming relationships. If you mean “not natural to humans”, I beg to differ. It is certainly natural to me, and many other people. The argument is usually, “It isn’t natural to [the person making the argument], therefore it isn’t natural.” This is akin to saying “I don’t like carrots, therefore liking carrots is unnatural.” (Now, a case can be made that homosexuality is abnormal, if one uses a strict definition of “abnormal” meaning “outside of the norm”. But that is rarely what the average person means when they say that.)

Carstonio

“What does it mean to be privileged?” Jamelle Bouie asked. “It means not having to think about any of this, ever.”

I’m a straight man who’s been married more than a decade, and on Valentine’s Day or any other day, I can hold hands with my wife in public and we can dine together in public and no one gives it a second thought. Same-sex couples should be able to do that and be greeted with the same benign indifference.

Definitely right that there’s nothing neutral about defining homosexuality as abnormal or unnatural, even while claiming to treat others’ sexual lives as none of one’s business. Like Albanaeon, I doubt there is such a thing as neutrality when it comes to LGBT issues. But if it does exist, I would think it includes the recognition that normality doesn’t belong in a value system because it rationalizes privilege.

Fusina

I guess I’m a romantic at heart, because when I see a committed couple holding hands, each happy to be with the other person, it makes me smile. And that goes whether they are hetero or homo. Two people in love is awesome. So benign observation maybe? But anything that increases the happiness in the world is a good thing. IMO.

Having friends who are gay may have caused some of this acceptance–I don’t know. But I love seeing other people in love.

http://flickr.com/photos/sedary_raymaker/ Naked Bunny with a Whip

The public school system I spent the most time in actually rearranged the bus routes on Wednesdays to take children to CCD classes.

http://stealingcommas.blogspot.com/ chris the cynic

@Leumor, more likely, he thinks trans people are uber-gay.

While I don’t doubt the accuracy of your statement that the position exists, the counterevidence is massive. The transperson I know best is a lesbian bisexual but with only lesbian relations to her name, who he would probably define as a sexually broken straight man.

–

While I believe that a case can be made that homosexuality is “unnatural” (and hence, broken in some sense),

It can probably be made, but it would be a very hard case to make due to all of the evidence of non-straightness in nature. It would be much easier to make the case that it is natural.

Though I definitely second what came after the comma, unnatural does not in any way mean wrong. (I say via the internet from inside of a heated building while it’s damn cold outside.)

http://flickr.com/photos/sedary_raymaker/ Naked Bunny with a Whip

Speaking of Fitch’s privilege…

People in these post-Christendom days in the West

Emphasis added.

Anyway, I hope none of you self-described Christians here “believe sex is for self-satisfaction or personal-fulfillment” because Fitch just threw you out of the entire religion. (He can do that, i guess.)

Wednesday

So, here’s the thing. I do believe neutrality is possible… but we need to step outside the immediate context of LGBT issues to figure out what neutrality should mean, and then apply that term to LGBT issues.

For example, I would consider myself to be neutral about my university’s Pokemon Club. I really, genuinely don’t care about what they’re doing, I don’t take a position on whether what they’re doing is intrinsically good or bad… but I do believe they should receive equal treatment to other student organizations — ie, they should have the same rights and obey the same rules. (Having specific rules such as “you may not be a pokemon club” are obviously against the philosophy of equal treatment.)

My support for equal treatment does not make me pro-Pokemon club — that would require I support their specific activities. I could even be personally morally opposed to Pokemon for some reason and still support equal treatment (see, eg, the ACLU taking cases supporting the rights of the KKK), although I wouldn’t be neutral anymore. But if I argued Pokemon club should not be treated the same as other organizations, took a stance against student-group-equality for Pokemon club in a way that gave them fewer rights and more rules, I’d not be neutral anymore — I’d be anti-Pokemon-club.

I am not neutral about the football team (I think the sport as it is currently played is too dangerous), or the queer students group (I think they serve an important, positive function on campus). I’m not campaigning actively against the football team at this time, but if given the opportunity I’d vote against its continued existence. This does, indeed, make me anti-football team.

So I argue that being neutral, having a neutral position, with regards to LGBTs is to support equal treatment under the law. And that means the spirit of equal treatment, none of this “gays and lesbians have the same rights as straight people they can just marry someone of the same sex! lol I’m so smart” bullshit. Neutrality doesn’t require actively campaigning for equal protection under the law, but it does require favoring it, and if given the opportunity to vote, voting in favor of equality.

http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

So I argue that being neutral, having a neutral position, with regards to LGBTs is to support equal treatment under the law.

As long as we’re defining terms, we may want to define “support.”

You seem to have an understanding of “support” wherein standing by quietly while someone is denied equal treatment counts as support, even if I don’t actually do or say anything to stop it, as long as I am prepared to vote for their equal treatment if someone gives me the opportunity.

Personally, I would say in that case that I endorse their equal treatment, but I wouldn’t say I support it.

Semantics aside, though, I’m certainly entitled to take that stance with respect to various groups. Indeed, I can’t help but do so. And describing my position in that case — neither harm nor interfere in the harm done by others — as “neutral” seems reasonable enough.

Carstonio

Putting the disingenuous argument of Fitch aside, I suggest we define “neutrality” here as equal treatment for all regardless of orientation, with no social norm attached to any orientation. Homophobes falsely accuse equality advocates of seeking to switch the social norm from heterosexuality to homosexuality. I suppose the true opposite to the idea of homosexuality as immoral is the orientation being a moral imperative, with heterosexuality as wrong, but in practice that’s an obvious straw person.

http://accidental-historian.typepad.com/ Geds

You seem to have an understanding of “support” wherein standing by quietly while someone is denied equal treatment counts as support, even if I don’t actually do or say anything to stop it, as long as I am prepared to vote for their equal treatment if someone gives me the opportunity.

I’m not Wednesday, but I read that particular argument as a form of a Just World Fallacy. If LGBTQ folk were equal, then neutrality would be possible. That’s true, in that right now I, as a guy with green/blue eyes am neutral on the rights of my brown-eyed brethren and sistren. But no one is openly persecuting brown eyed people, so it doesn’t matter.

Here we get to the old line from Howard Zinn: you can’t be neutral on a moving train.[1] To be neutral now is to support a status quo that treats some people as not-actual-people. To discuss neutrality in a theoretical future world is great and all, but it’s immaterial. That train is moving right now, so the question is, “What are you going to do about it?”

–

[1]Full disclosure: I get the line from Eddie Vedder referencing it on a Pearl Jam bootleg. So, y’know, that might have been a paraphrase…

http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

Geds:

>That train is moving right now, so the question is, “What are you going to do about it?”

Well, yes, that’s absolutely right. And if I understood Wednesday correctly, their answer is “I’d vote for equality given the chance, but otherwise nothing much.” That question has been answered; the outstanding question is what label applies to the answer.

Carstonio:

> I suggest we define “neutrality” here as equal treatment for all regardless of orientation, with no social norm attached to any orientation.

OK, I’m down with that.

Hypothetically, if I as an individual live in a culture that isn’t neutral on that account, and I strive to treat everyone the same regardless of orientation, and I don’t personally assume a social norm of heterosexuality… for example, if when a coworker talks about their spouse or SO I don’t assume a gender, if when I see same-sex pairings I assume they might be romantic, if when I see two guys making out in the park I treat them just as I would treat any other two people of whatever gender making out in the park, etc. etc. etc. … but I take no active steps to interfere with harmful or unjust behavior on the part of other people towards those displaying or experiencing certain sexual orientations, what label would you suggest attaching to my hypothetical position as an individual?

Because I’m OK with calling that “neutral” as well.

It’s also worth noting that a neutral position of that sort will often put me in conflict with my social environment, which is to be expected of taking a neutral position in a non-neutral social environment.

Hexep

How about ‘indifferent?’ As a largely indifferent person, I’m happy to take that label.

http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

> How about ‘indifferent?’

For my own part, I would expect a person indifferent to LGBT equality to adopt and reinforce the local conventions (e.g., to assume that all spouses are opposite-gendered, and to treat same-sex PDA differently from opposite-sex PDA), and thereby end up doing more harm than the hypothetical person I was describing.

Getting to neutrality within an actively hostile culture takes work.

Carstonio

but I take no active steps to interfere with harmful or unjust behavior on the part of other people towards those displaying or experiencing certain sexual orientations, what label would you suggest attaching to my hypothetical position as an individual?

Probably “malign indifference.” The hypothetical you might not favor a particular outcome, but your inaction (really just another action) leads to a non-neutral outcome because it doesn’t counteract the social norm. You would be perpetuating a non-neutral social environment. Somewhat like ignoring instances of cheating in a game or sport.

http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

> your inaction (really just another action) leads to a non-neutral outcome because it doesn’t counteract the social norm

Well, it does, and it doesn’t.

I mean, every time I refuse to assume my coworker’s spouse is opposite-gendered, I am subverting cultural heteronormativity.

This doesn’t have a particularly significant effect, granted… but then again, most individual acts of social activism don’t have a particularly significant effect either.

So, I dunno.

In any case… I think by this definition I am (non-hypothetically) in a position of malign indifference with respect to well over 90% of the suffering and injustice in the world. I suspect pretty much everyone is. So, Idunno… it seems rather absurdly hypocritical of me to chastise someone else for their malign indifference to the suffering and injustice of a group I happen to be part of.

Carstonio

Valid point. I would generally define malign indifference as more personally specific, such as not speaking up if a friend or acquaintance expressed homophobia. Or doing nothing if the person mistreated someone else based on real or perceived orientation. That would probably be my criteria for whether the inaction merited chastising.

http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

(nods) That makes sense, and I think I agree with you with that clarification.

I certainly endorse encouraging people I know to speak up when they notice people they know are causing harm or injustice (whatever the reason or mechanism), and endorse encouraging people I know to improve their ability to notice.

That’s not necessarily to say I endorse chastising them when they don’t, since that doesn’t always encourage the behavior I want, but it’s a close enough approximation for our purposes.

Wednesday

I never said (or meant to imply) that neutrality was inherently good. My point was that that if people want to claim neutrality on LGBTness, the only way this could make sense is if they support (or endorse) LGBT rights. Once consequence (which I didn’t state before but I will state now) is that anything less than support/endorsement of full equality is, by definition, being anti-LGBT and therefore it is a matter of fact (not mean librul accusation opinion) that they are anti-gay bigots.

As for distinguishing between support/endorsement/active campaigning… I really didn’t want to get into the details there. Because we all have finite resources (time, money, energy), and our spheres of influence vary (it’s easier to effect the same type of change in my own community than in another town three states over). So even if we are donating to Amnesty International or the HRC or working for legal equality in our own country, we’re still doing nothing about thousands of other injustices and preventable harms around the world. So.. we all do an awful lot of “standing by and doing nothing”. :/

http://dpolicar.livejournal.com/ Dave

Yup, absolutely agreed. (See my response to Carstonio below.)

Tricksterson

First Rule of Pokemon Club: Don’t talk about Pokemon Club.

http://accidental-historian.typepad.com/ Geds

And it means that you get to decide what “position” to take toward others, or to loftily take no position at all, while others can never have a “position” on the “question” of you. Unlike them, you’re never a “question.” That’s what privilege means.

This attitude, writ large, pretty much explains the a huge part of my decision to leave Christianity. LGBTQ stuff was an aspect, but it was so much more pervasive than that.

I had friends who weren’t Christian and who were doing things like having sex with people to whom they weren’t married. Heterosexual sex, mind you, but sex. I knew people who smoked pot. I knew people who were of other religious belief. They were all just living their lives amidst varying levels of happiness and fulfillment.

I was supposed to let them know that the way I was living my life was better than theirs and tell them that they were broken because they didn’t go to church and flagellate themselves for their sin all the time. If anyone told me I was being a judgmental asshole, though, it was a mark against them for not accepting Jesus like I had, not a mark against me for being a judgmental asshole. I eventually realized the system was untenable.

Since I left Evangelical Christianity I’ve become increasingly convinced that everyone should be allowed to be anything they want and the only limit should be harm. If they’re hurting someone else they should be stopped. If they’re hurting themselves they should at least get some level of intervention. Beyond that, though, I see live, let live, and give everyone opportunity to find their own happiness as best they can. It’s really pretty simple. And it beats the crap out of tying myself into rhetorical and philosophical knots just to justify looking down on everyone else.

http://musings.northerngrove.com/ JarredH

I think it’s important to note that Fitch is not merely encouraging individuals to to take (rather curious) position of neutrality, but churches, other evangelical institutions, and “the whole of evangelical Christianity” as a monolithic entity to take such a position. This is a problem, because many of those institutions have been a source of anti-LGBT animus and denying LGBT people their rights. For those institutions to try and claim the kind of “neutrality” — and their neutrality is “We will quit (publicly) arguing over whether being LGBT is a sin” — is simply an attempt to (1) make themselves look superficially less “controversial” and (2) abdicate any responsibility for how their lengthy diatribes against the alleged immorality of being LGBT gave birth and sustenance to the anti-LGBT injustices we experience today and will continue raging on despite Fitch and company’s new-found “neutrality.” It’s nothing short of irresponsibility.

As an aside, Fitch posted this same thing (or at least something similar) on his on blog at the end of last month. Various people challenged him on it, bringing up the issue of civil rights and justice. I found it very telling (and contradictory to his “neutrality” position) when he talked about “gay and lesbian ‘rights'” in this comment. I tried leaving a comment for him, asking why he put the word “rights” in quotes in that phrase, as it seemed to me to imply he didnt’ consider them “real rights.” Sadly, the comment didn’t post(*), so I never got a response.

(*) I should note that for some reason, my comments often get flagged as spam when I comment on a blog from work for the first time. I am not implying that Fitch intentionally, moderated or deleted my comment.

http://www.facebook.com/shaenon Shaenon K. Garrity

Barring Muslim students from prayer time if they get bad grades makes perfect sense.

I’m assuming, of course, that when the Christian students get bad grades, they have to start coming to school on Sundays.